The Birthday Boy and Girl

We are blessed with the cutest and smartest grand kids...seriously. Two of them share August 16th as their birthday...even the same year...Bronson, Kari and Will's son, and Gracie, Jimmy and Hollie's daughter, both turned 5 this past Monday. Sue and I had a chance to share some time with both of them ( a real trick so no one feels left out by grandma and grandpa :) ) We love spending time with all of our grand kids whenever we get the chance.

Bronson absolutely loves anything to do with Cowboys. He got the whole shebang of cowboy get up including, real cowboy jeans, boots, hat, belt buckle, shirts, some six shooters. He's a real cowpoke now. We we able to share a lot of that experience with them on Sunday evening. On Monday his parents took him to the Texas Roadhouse where he was treated to a special ride in the birthday saddle. What a great time for Bronson...he is on cloud nine. That boy has moved to the right area of the country, because here in Utah, there really are real cowboys. He's practicing his new cowboy walk in those tighter than tight jeans and boots. He'll be ready for mutton busting one of these days real soon....then bull riding....that's just around the corner. (sorry Kari...just make sure the insurance is paid up)

Gracie had a friend party during the day on Monday and got all kinds of neat little girly girl stuff. A lot of it was Barbie related...because....well...she really is a little girly girl and looooves anything to do with Barbie. Jimmy and Hollie had a fun family get together at night where she got a lot of books, and lots of other fun things. He most favorite gift of all was....wait till you hear this....MOUTHWASH! Seriously. This little girl is so funny. She always has hand sanitizer with her and loves mouthwash. So Sue and I and grandma and grandpa Comeford both got her a few bottles of mouthwash....the kind that colors your teeth until you brush it off. She also got a couple of Barbie electric toothbrushes. 

 The little princess in front of her special birthday wall. Hollie is so creative

Gracie sharing some fun with Preston

 Jimmy, Hollie, Gracie, and Preston (peeking)

 Grandma & Grandpa with the birthday girl.

 The birthday cupcake mmmm good!

 Gracie checking things out

 Gracie absolutely loves Elvis....she gets that from Hollie's family. She can sing most of the songs he sang in his movies...5 going on 16

 The birthday goods!

 Dinner at Texas Roadhouse for a family of 6 about $75, making little boy's dream come true....PRICELESS

He's ready for action!

Mom telling Bronson about the finer things of cowboy life.

Practicing his draw... a real little Wyatt Twerp

Bronson's first hostage....Eli....daddy loves this!

There's boots in that there box Pilgrim

The little birthday buckaroo himself

Will and Payton getting things ready for Bronson

Enjoying our Second Anniversary Together

Our first two years together have flown by. We decided to get out of town for a couple of days for some much needed R&R.

We reserved a hotel for a couple nights down in Las Vegas. Most of you that really know us, know that R&R to us means "Rippin and Rarin" to go...seriously....we love being busy....maybe when we get old we'll slow down for awhile and take a vacation in the mountains by a lake with no cell service...but...until then....we have chosen to be busy.

We stayed at the Westin Casaurina just a block off the strip. It is a really nice, almost a boutique kind of hotel. We had lots of great food and saw some pretty amazing entertainment.

We went to the Mirage on Friday night to see Terry Fator, Fator is the dude who won America's got talent a couple of years ago as a ventriloquist. The guy was amazing. Be fore we saw the show we went to grad a salad at BB kings restaurant and was entertained by some blues group that was playing. BB King they weren't...but...if you like Blues (and I do) they were pretty good. After Fator's show we walked the strip and went through Casear's Palace Forum shops where Sue and I went to eat at Wolfgang Puck's Spago restaurant. it was really very good .

Saturday morning  brought a new day of fun and adventure. We ate breakfast at the Hash House a Go-Go (Man vs. Food) was there not too long ago. i had the sage fried chicken and waffles....mmmm good, Sue just had the vanilla waffles.

We then spent the day walking around Vegas, people-watching, and doing some shopping. Then when night time came around we headed over to our favorite Italian restaurant, Maggiano's. We had a perfect near window seat overlooking the strip...a view that we really hadn't seen before. The meal was delicious as always but the time spent with my beautiful wife was priceless. After dinner we went over to Treasure Island so we could see Mystere',  a Cirque du Soleil show that is kind of like a bizarre circus performance. Pretty amazing though.

We wrapped things up on Sunday and headed for home. We were about 15 miles South of Mesquite Nevada when the temperature dipped to 46 degrees from 99 degrees in just seconds. Then all hail broke loos (pun intended). Seriously, we wee caught in the middle of the worst haul storm I have ever seen. 10 minutes of pure hell and nowhere to hide. My new car is now the recipient of a hundred dents and dings thanks to this storm. Nobody was hurt but we actually had to yell at the top of our voices to be hear each other inside the car.

After all this we still had a wonderful time together because we were with each other.

August 8th brings many different meanings and emotions to our family. There have been so many  things happen on this date. I remember when Sue told me that she wanted to get married on 8-8-2008, that she wanted the date to be remembered for something good.  Not that the other things should be forgotten, they shouldn't be, and cannot be forgotten. But, it's great to see my beautiful wife happy. She is such an energetic little lady with so much life in her. I love her and love being with her and around her.

We both have been blessed with children that love us. We are fortunate to have the family that we do have. We love being around them too, even if it's not as often as we would like. Life is very busy for us but we try to spend the quality time together as often as we can.

We look forward to many more happy years together. All the best!